A simple start?

_{Mark

October 20, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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In case we did not know, New Scientist confirms that at the base of the (postulated) tree of life is an extremely complex life form, much like a modern cell.

“There is no doubt that the progenitor of all life on Earth, the common ancestor, possessed DNA, RNA and proteins, a universal genetic code, ribosomes (the protein-building factories), ATP and a proton-powered enzyme for making ATP. The detailed mechanisms for reading off DNA and converting genes into proteins were also in place. In short, then, the last common ancestor of all life looks pretty much like a modern cell.”

It is easy (or not) to imagine something as simple as that arising by natural processes.

here

Comments

@Magnan Maybe it was presumptuous, but not entirely uncalled for. Most atheists I've seen are either angry, bitter, or arrogant (or some combination of the three) whenever the topic is discussed.Berceuse_{October 29, 2009
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Here is a really cool video to that effect Nak: Christianity Is The Foundation Of Modern Science - Henry Schaefer PhD. Part 1 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI-4aVG0UxI Christianity Is The Foundation Of Modern Science - Henry Schaefer PhD. Part 2 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlShXV98H3g Christianity Is The Foundation Of Modern Science - Henry Schaefer PhD. Part 3 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGrBCy_A0CEbornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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Hey Nak you stated,
"I’d like to talk about ID and its ripples in the world, which is science, not religion."
Well Nak did you know it is very well possible that without Christianity there would be no modern science as we know it.
"However we may interpret the fact, (sustained) scientific development has only occurred in a Christian culture. The ancients had brains as good as ours. In all civilizations, ancient Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, India, Rome, Persia, China, the Abassid empire and so on, science developed to a certain point and stopped. It is easy to argue speculatively that, perhaps, science might have been able to develop in the absence of Christianity, but in fact it never did." Robert E. D. Clark - Christian Belief and Science
Famous (Founding) Scientists Who Believed in God http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencefaith.html Christianity and the Birth of Science by Michael Bumbulis, Ph.D http://www.ldolphin.org/bumbulis/bornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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StephenB: "I have pointed out many times on this blog that atheism is not an intellectual position at all; it is an emotional cry of wrath." Rather presumptuous. It would be just as justified to ascribe belief in God to fear. Aside from that, atheism can just as well be considered both an intellectual and an emotional position: that it is better to believe in no God, rather than a God ultimately responsible for the horrendous human condition (ignoring all the evidence for a Creator).magnan_{October 29, 2009
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I have pointed out many times on this blog that atheism is not an intellectual position at all; it is an emotional cry of wrath. The evidence for a creator, or a first cause, are overwhelming, and, in any case, reason dictates that everything that begins to exist [the universe] must have a cause. There is no way around the force of that argument, though many here have tried in vain to avoid its force. According to Paul Vitz, a former atheist and professor of psychology at NYU, “the major barriers to belief in God are not rational and can be called, in a general sense, psychological.” He argues that absent or deficient fathers predispose their children to atheism. “The atheists disappointment in and resentment of his own earthly father unconsciously justifies his rejection of God.” Or as someone else once put it, we cannot perceive the heavenly Father in God if we cannot, in any way, perceive God in our earthly father Among the many famous atheists who were mistreated by their fathers we can include, Friedrich Nietzche, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, John-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and H.G. Wells. Examples of theists from the same period include Blaise Pascal, Edmund Burke, Moses Mendelssohn, Soren Kierkegaard, G. K. Chesterton, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In each case, the atheists had weak, bad or absent fathers. By contrast, the theists had good fathers or good father substitutes. No doubt a few atheists can claim that they loved and were loved by their fathers, but that simply means is that they have found some other emotional pretext to justify the testimony of reason. Romans 1: 20 got it right: Evidence of God’s handiwork is all over the place. Most atheists are atheists because they prefer to be that way. “The fool has said in his heart [not mind, not brain] that there is no God.”StephenB_{October 29, 2009
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InvAluable junk: the cellular impact and function of Alu and B2 RNAs - 2009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19621349?ordinalpos=29&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum 42 Glinsky GV. 2008. Phenotype-defining functions of multiple non-coding RNA pathways. Cell Cycle 7(11): 1630-1639. 43 Bond CS, Fox AH. 2008. Paraspeckles: nuclear bodies built on long noncoding RNA. J. Cell Biol. 186(5): 637-644. 44 Barak M, et al. In press. Evidence for large diversity in the human transcriptome created by Alu RNA editing. Nucleic Acids Res. 45 Lee JT. 2009. Lessons from X-chromosome inactivation: long ncRNA as guides and tethers to the epigenome. Genes Dev. 23(16): 1831-1842. 46 Guttman M, et al. 2009. Chromatin signature reveals over a thousand highly conserved large non-coding RNAs in mammals. Nature 458(7235): 223-227. 47 Faulkner GJ, et al. 2009. The regulated retrotransposon transcriptome of mammalian cells. Nat Genet. 41(5): 563-571. 48 Tay SK, et al. 2009. Global discovery of primate-specific genes in the human genome. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 106(29): 12019-12024. etc...etc...etc... Dave You know what is really weird Dave,,,it is that you will ignore everything I present that is peer reviewed no matter what it says or who wrote it,,,just so you may concentrate on unsubstantiated pseudo speculations of a highly questionable paper coming from a highly questionable character ,,,just so in order to cling ever so tenaciously to a morsel of justification for your atheism,,, Practicing science just in order to protect a bankrupt world view is not science DAVE!!! It would be absolutely hilarious if it were not for the fact you think you are actually being legitimate with your inquiries into reality with the miraculous tool of science!bornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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Want to match peer review Dave? Lets see I'll match your 2005 paper with: How The Junk DNA Hypothesis Has Changed Since 1980 - Richard Sternberg - Oct. 2009 - Excellent Summary Excerpt: A surprising finding of ENCODE and other transcriptome projects is that almost every nucleotide of human (and mouse) chromosomes is transcribed in a regulated way. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/how_the_junk_dna_hypothesis_ha.html Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs) - Page up for Pseudo-genes refutation http://www.detectingdesign.com/pseudogenes.html#Endogenous Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVS) A Case for Common Descent or A Case for Incorrect Presupposition? http://www.whoisyourcreator.com/endogenous_retroviruses.html How Scientific Evidence is Changing the Tide of the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design Debate by Wade Schauer: List Of "Junk DNA discussed: Tandem Repeats, Transposons/Retrotransposons, SINE/Alu Sequences, LINES, Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs) and LTR retrotransposons, Pseudogenes, C-Value Enigma, “Junk DNA” becomes “The Transcriptome”, Human Accelerated Regions (HARs), ....What can we conclude from the evidence presented in this essay: Every type of “Junk DNA” presented by pro-evolution websites has been found to have functional roles in organisms, which severely undermines the “shared errors” argument; www.geocities.com/wade_schauer/Changing_Tide.pdf Conserved Noncoding Elements: More Contradictory Genetic Data http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/09/conserved-noncoding-elements-more.html Astonishing DNA complexity update Excerpt: The untranslated regions (now called UTRs, rather than ‘junk’) are far more important than the translated regions (the genes), as measured by the number of DNA bases appearing in RNA transcripts. Genic regions are transcribed on average in five different overlapping and interleaved ways, while UTRs are transcribed on average in seven different overlapping and interleaved ways. Since there are about 33 times as many bases in UTRs than in genic regions, that makes the ‘junk’ about 50 times more active than the genes. http://creation.com/astonishing-dna-complexity-updatebornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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Hi vjtorley, Thanks for the link. It doesn't surprise me that Dr Axe would have that view of the implications of his work. My purpose here, howe ever, is to get people to strat thiunking about the work itself. It may be daunting technically to a layman, but I think Art did a very good job expressing his concerns with Axe's conclusions in terms understandable to those of us unfamiliar with the arcane world of biochemistry. And I think he focused on the essential issues, which could easily be lost to a layman struggling with the original paper.Dave Wisker_{October 29, 2009
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born is suddenly concerned about peer review. Well, here is a quote from the peer-reviewed paper on junk RNA that Art was discussing: :
This is consistent with the notion that a large fraction of the intergenic regions containing SAGE tag (more than 10% of the overall genic regions; Velculescu et al 1997) encode genuine transcripts that are normally targeted for degradation
Wyers F, M Rougemaille, G Badis, J Rousselle, M Dufour J Boulay, B Régnault, F Devaux, ANamane, BSéraphin (2005). Cryptic Pol II Transcripts Are Degraded by a Nuclear Quality Control Pathway Involving a New Poly(A) Polymerase. Cell 121(5): 725-737Dave Wisker_{October 29, 2009
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Dave Wisker (#291) Have you seen this article? Scientist Says His Peer-Reviewed Research in the Journal of Molecular Biology "Adds to the Case for Intelligent Design". I realize it's not as current as the article by Art Hunt which you cited, but at least it tells you where Axe himself feels the data points. If you want a technical response to Art Hunt's article, you might like to email Dr. Stephen Meyer.vjtorley_{October 29, 2009
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Mr Vjtorley, Yes, Mr Williams has a particular definition of 'functional' - if it is transcribed into RNA, the DNA is functional. Interestingly, if there was a stretch of DNA that I didn't want to use, one way of handling that is to translate both strands into RNA and let them pair back up as double stranded RNA. You could call this transcription "function" I suppose... Alas, I have limited biological facilities available here in my supersecret lair on Volcano Island - FedEx refuses to deliver to my address!!1! But I agree that archaea are good place to look. As you point out, such strong conservation would lead to a supposition of high survival value!Nakashima_{October 29, 2009
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Mr. Nakashima (#274) Thank you for your response. First, a couple of points about histones. You rightly note that bacteria don't have histones. I should point out, however, that some archaea do. In any case, the fact that bacteria don't possess histones does not, in and of itself, make their origin any less mysterious. I should also like to note that chromosomal histones are one of the most highly conserved protein molecules in eukaryotic cells. Wikipedia comments: "It also appears that the structure of histones has been evolutionarily conserved, as any deleterious mutations would be severely maladaptive." That tells me that histone evolution is severely constrained, to say the very least. Regarding your hypothesis that meta-information was a later function of histones, which piggybacked on top of its original function for packing, I have a couple of questions: (1) Have you run your ideas by any reputable biologist in the field? (2) Have you thought about how your hypothesis would be tested empirically? For instance, if you're right, we might expect to find organisms for which histones serve a function for packing, but have no role as repositories of meta-information. Probably the archaea would be the place to look. Are there any answers on that question, yet? I should mention that Alex Williams has written an article specifically about meta-information at http://creation.com/meta-information . The problem for your piggybacking hypothesis, as I see it, is that there's just so much of this meta-information in the human genome. The regulatory meta-information in our cells actually dwarfs the protein-coding information. Meta-information cannot be dismissed as peripheral; it is a defining feature of eukaryotic cells. Here's a relevant excerpt from Williams' article:
The human genome contains an enormous amount of information, far more than we ever (until recently) imagined. But we now know that most of it is not primary information (protein-coding genes) but meta-information —the information that cells need to have in order to turn those protein-coding genes into a functional human being and maintain and reproduce that functional being. This meta-information is stored and used in a variety of ways: DNA consists of a double-helix—two long-chain molecules twisted around one another. Each strand consists of a chain of four different kinds of nucleotide molecules (the shorthand symbols are T, A, G and C). About 3% of this in humans consists of protein-coding genes and the other 97% appears to be regulatory meta-information. DNA is an information-storage molecule, like a closed book. This stored information is put to use by being copied onto RNA molecules, and the RNA molecules put the DNA information into action in the cell. For every molecule of protein-producing RNA (primary information), there are about 50 molecules of regulatory RNA (meta-information). Down the sides of the DNA double-helix, several different kinds of chemical chains are attached in patterns that code meta-information for turning unspecialized embryonic stem cells into the specialized cells that are needed in fingers, feet, toenails and tail-bones etc. DNA is a very long thin molecule. If we unwound one set of human chromosomes, the DNA would be about 2 metres long. To pack it up into the very tiny nucleus inside the very tiny human cell, it is coiled up in four different levels of chromatin structure into 46 chromosomes. This coiling chromatin structure also contains yet further levels of meta-information. The first level (the histone code) codes information about the cell’s history (i.e. it is a cell memory). The three further levels of coiling code further information, some of which is described below, and there is no doubt more that we have yet to unravel. The amount of meta-information in the human genome is thus truly enormous compared with the amount of primary gene-coding information.
I should add that your remarks do not touch upon the other major point that Williams makes - namely, that DNA coding is much more efficient than anything human engineers have come up with. As Williams writes:
DNA information is overlapping-multi-layered and multi-dimensional; it reads both backwards and forwards; and the 'junk' is far more functional than the protein code.... No human engineer has ever even imagined, let alone designed an information storage device anything like it.
Or in the words of the atheist humanitarian and expert software designer, Bill Gates:
Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created." The Road Ahead, 1996, p. 188.
I have a healthy respect for designs that are so clever that I couldn't have figured them out myself. I put it to you that the hypothesis that someone smarter than I am thought them up warrants serious consideration, and should be the default hypothesis until and unless it is shown to be highly unlikely.vjtorley_{October 29, 2009
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Still nobody willing to actually take on Art's essay regarding Axe's calculations. Lots of irrelevant distractions, however.Dave Wisker_{October 29, 2009
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Nakashima,
I’m glad to see you standing up so strongly for the importance of peer review in the matter of Art Hunt’s criticism of Axe. Does this mean you will delete all the non-peer reviewed articles from your database of quotes? Your principled stand is an example to everyone.
He's just applying the same criterion to those who tout it.Clive Hayden_{October 29, 2009
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Mr BA^77, I'm glad to see you standing up so strongly for the importance of peer review in the matter of Art Hunt's criticism of Axe. Does this mean you will delete all the non-peer reviewed articles from your database of quotes? Your principled stand is an example to everyone.Nakashima_{October 29, 2009
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Hmm, Upright quotes Hunt directly on his completely wrong postulations of junk begetting junk and this is a red herring for you??? Hyper selective are we not oh pragmatic Dave?,,,I consider it a direct statement of fact,,that has direct impact on how we should view any postulations coming from Mr. Hunt,,, you are free to chase his ramblings if you want,,, I see no merit in his current postulations since he made blatantly incorrect postulations in the past,, i.e. He needs to pass peer review to redeem himself as far as I'm concerned! Nak as far as you practicing science correctly your atheistic glasses are blinding you to everything! Thus of what point is it to discuss anything in science with you when you can't even truly see the scientific issue to begin with?bornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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Wow, ultrasmall RNA with significant biological function! I guess we don't have to raise 4 to the 150th power any more when talking about random oligomers having function. 4^15 is still longer than the lifetime of the universe, right? Gotta ask Kalinsky about this...Nakashima_{October 29, 2009
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Upright, I see you have joined born in avoiding the specific questions Art was addressing about Axe's paper. Congratulations. Any more red herrings you' like to throw up helping born to save face?Dave Wisker_{October 29, 2009
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Mr BA^77, I can guarantee you that any conversation I want to have about my soul will not be carried out in the comment threads of UD, and won't be with you. Here, I'd like to talk about ID and its ripples in the world, which is science, not religion. Thank you.Nakashima_{October 29, 2009
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WOW, Thanks Upright, Hey Dave, seeing as Hunt ain't even close to reality, as far as mainstream science is concerned regarding Junk DNA, do you really want to hitch your wagon to his? If you really feel his pseudo-speculations qualify as rigorous science why don't you send his paper to Axe, who is far more qualified to comment on it than I, and see what he thinks,,,I am sure that Axe will be willing to address any relevant merits that may be there,,, I'm sure Axe may appreciate a good laugh from reading it as well.bornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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Address the speculative world of Art Hunt? “…the bottom line is that the so-called “function” that so excites the ID proponents may be little more than manifestations of quality control in gene expression, and that the supposed functional swaths of non-coding junk DNA may be nothing more than parts of the genome that encode, and lead to the production of, “junk” RNA (if I may so bold as to coin a phrase). In a nutshell, junk piled on top of junk…Which means that all of this excitement about RNAs encoded by junk DNA is not warranted – unless one tends to get excited at the prospects of junk, junk squared, and garbage disposals. In a nutshell, what looks like junk may not only be junk, it may give rise to even more junk” – Art Hunt Oct. 2007 - - - - - - Science Daily Oct. 2009:
No Such Thing As 'Junk RNA,' Say Researchers Tiny strands of RNA previously dismissed as cellular junk are actually very stable molecules that may play significant roles in cellular processes, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI). The findings, published last week in the online version of the Journal of Virology, represent the first examination of very small RNA products termed unusually small RNAs (usRNAs). Further study of these usRNAs, which are present in the thousands but until now have been neglected, could lead to new types of biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis, and new therapeutic targets. In recent years, scientists have recognized the importance of small RNAs that generally contain more than 20 molecular units called nucleotides, said senior author Bino John, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Computational Biology, Pitt School of Medicine. "But until we did our experiments, we didn't realize that RNAs as small as 15 nucleotides, which we thought were simply cell waste, are surprisingly stable, and are repeatedly, reproducibly, and accurately produced across different tissue types." Dr. John said. "We have dubbed these as usRNAs, and we have identified thousands of them, present in a diversity that far exceeds all other longer RNAs found in our study." The team's experiments began with the observation that the Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus produces a usRNA that can control the production of a human protein. Detailed studies using both computational and experimental tools revealed a surprisingly large world of approximately 15 nucleotide-long usRNAs with intriguing characteristics. Many usRNAs interact with proteins already known to be involved in small RNA regulatory pathways. Some also share highly specific nucleotide patterns at one end. The researchers wrote that the existence of several different patterns in usRNAs reflects the diverse pathways in which the RNAs participate. "These findings suggest that usRNAs are involved in biological processes, and we should investigate them further," Dr. John noted. "They may be valuable tools to diagnose diseases, or perhaps they could present new drug targets."
When faced with the fact that Junk DNA isn’t junk (in 2007 no less), he recoils to the position that not only is it junk, but the fact that it is transcribed only means it codes for Junk RNA. Junk begets Junk -or- ideological wild-assed speculation begets more of the same? Which of these is true?Upright BiPed_{October 29, 2009
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Born, My original post was in reference to Arts discussion of Axe's conclusions. I am under no obligation to go running after your inky cloud of misdirection away from those points.Dave Wisker_{October 29, 2009
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Dave, as is your refusal to address the points I raised noted:bornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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Born, Your continual refusal to address the points in Art Hunt's essay is duly noted.Dave Wisker_{October 29, 2009
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You know Dave, You are in the same "leaky boat" as Nak, You would rather be lost in a myriad of obscure detail than to face the truth that admitting there actually is a God would have on your life. Which in my opinion would be a very, very good truth for you to admit and accept. But to try, in my very limited ability, to address the information "problem" of proteins let's consider a few points: Michael Behe is playing havoc with evolutionists right now, in a series of essays dealing with protein evolution, on ENV by showing: Thanks to Thornton’s impressive work, we can now see that the limits to Darwinian evolution are more severe than even I had supposed. This severe limit Behe had previously "supposed" was: "The likelihood of developing two binding sites in a protein complex would be the square of of the probability of developing one: a double CCC (chloroquine complexity cluster), 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. There have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the entire world in the past 4 billion years, so the odds are against a single event of this variety (just 2 binding sites being generated by accident) in the history of life. It is biologically unreasonable." Michael J. Behe PhD. (from page 146 of his book "Edge of Evolution") Thus fairly strongly indicating, even neglecting novel protein generation, that the proteins present in life are far too functionally complex to evolve into even any simpler or more complex proteins of similar functional complexity,, Severe Limits to Darwinian Evolution: Michael Behe http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/severe_limits_to_darwinian_evo.html But this point is totally mute to you as with Nak? Why is this Dave? Yet when we look at the proteins in life, instead of Szotaks " simply sticky proteins", in terms of functional complexity we see some very weird things,,for instance,,, Proteins have also been shown to have a "Cruise Control" mechanism, which works to "self-correct" the integrity of the protein structure from any random mutations imposed on them.
Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective: "A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order." http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S22/60/95O56/
Cruise Control?!?,, Last time I checked, cruise control is a very limiting thing for a car that prevents any change in speed from happening. Though the authors of the paper tried to put a evolution friendly spin on the "cruise control" evidence, finding an advanced "Process Control Loop" at such a base molecular level, before natural selection even has a chance to select for any morphological novelty, is very much to be expected as a Intelligent Design/Genetic Entropy feature, and is in fact a very constraining thing to the amount of variation we can expect from a "kind" of animal in the first place. Dave do you know how much much functional information is required to achieve "process control"?? Well lets take a look: For a protein to be "complete in its information content", in its ability to "cruise control" it would have to implement three different algorithmic forms of control: Proportional (P) Integral (I) and Derivative. PID controller: Excerpt: A proportional–integral–derivative controller (PID controller) is a generic control loop feedback mechanism (controller) widely used in industrial control systems. A PID controller attempts to correct the error between a measured process variable and a desired setpoint by calculating and then outputting a corrective action that can adjust the process accordingly and rapidly, to keep the error minimal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller The equations involved for getting even this minimal level of "cruise control" for a dynamically interactive protein are staggering to put it mildly. (Page down on the wiki article to get a small taste of what I'm talking about) Several complex equations, which are derived from the basic PID platform of equations, are necessary to achieve different forms of simple process control in different scenarios in chemical industry. Many of these complex equations will surely be found to be integrated and overlapping so as to be utilized in proteins since proteins are so much more "dynamically controlled" from within its own structure (i.e. the information for control must reside within the protein with no recourse to the DNA for correction once the protein is made)), in such a demanding "process" as is found in life it is ludicrous to suppose otherwise, There is simply no other way for a protein to achieve such self control or any control for that matter unless this type of algorithmic information is inherent within its structure... Shoot it is realizing stuff like this that makes me think even the 1 in 10^77 estimate of Axe, is far to generous for finding a specific functional protein within sequence space.bornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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born,
You know Dave, I’ve been lied to so much I really don’t care what evolutionists say anymore it all turns out to be deception when I dig into it (which has been hundreds of times by now,,,, so just cut to the chase Dave,,, show me the money and so me just one experiment where a sub-species bacteria has gained functionality over its parent-species. Or better show some real scientific integrity and falsify Abel’s Null Hypothesis for information generation,,,Shoot you would probably become legendary within scientific circles if you could do that!
Actually, my goal here is far more modest. I'm trying to get you to discuss the actual points made in Art Hunt's essay, which so far you have steadfastly refused to do. But since you have decided to play the victim card about how all the big bad Darwinists keep lying to you, engaging in further discussion is probably pointless. Do svedanya.Dave Wisker_{October 29, 2009
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Nak, And which is of more importance? You getting right with God or you getting the exact degree to which mycoplasmal exceeds our programming ability? I mean really,,,think about it Nak,,if Abel or Trevor's, or somebody of that caliber, were able to actually "count" all the functional information inherent in the DNA and proteins of the mycoplasmal, and to showed that it exceeded our ability to program by say 10^12th degree, would that really make one Iota difference to you? Would you not just ignore that fact, as you have all others, and move on to some other irrelevant point so as not to face the weightier issue that admitting there actually is a God would have on your life? (which would be a very God thing by the way!)bornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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Mr BA^77, I'm trying to hold up my end of the conversation. I offered some different estimates and comparisons of M. gen and weather forecasting codes. Your responses were either misguided, in thinking the 2D projection of a weather map was the output, or irrelevant, in demanding that a supercomputer reproduce. I'm not trying to 'prove' anything. I'm trying to have a nice, reasonable discussion about one small point in a much referenced paper, a point you brought up. In the sense that I'm trying to talk about science, and you're trying to talk about my eternal soul and its destiny in hellfire without a personal acceptance Jesus Christ and quantum teleportation of the Holy Spirit, no, we are not having the same conversation. But I'm aware of that, and try desperately to compensate.Nakashima_{October 29, 2009
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Excuse me Nak, Are we even in the same conversation? You haven't even begun to "prove" the weather computer program comes close to the technical brilliance of the functional/algorithmic information in mycoplasmal!!! By the way the topic of the thread is "A Simple Start", thus I find my reference the physics and chemistry of the universe to be of direct foundational relevance. And staggering to the overall issue as to WHY ARE YOU so blind to the design inference? That the entire universe would be found to be balanced to within 1 to 10^60 for mass density is screaming design. In fact my back of the envelope calculations reckons it to "A SINGLE GRAIN OF SAND" which is smaller than Ross's "very conservative" tenth of a dime estimate". Why is this mind blowing "coincidence" of absolutely no interest to you? Oh that's right you are a dogmatic atheist who could care less about the truth! That is why YOU seek to change to overall topic of the thread by "getting lost" in technical irrelevance so that YOU may not have to face to primary question of God and His impact on YOUR personal life. All I can say Nak is be a man and deal with it and quit trying to hide in BS! That there would be such a profound disconnect between "life friendly" physics and "natural information generation" (Abel Null Hypothesis) only gives a huge roadsign as to Who the designer of life actually is (The Word) as well as ruling out pantheism that many people would be sure to get lost in instead of actually "finding" the living God, though God is surely not the one who is lost.bornagain77_{October 29, 2009
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Mr Vjtorley, I'm sorry I haven't responded earlier to your contributions about the Met Office. Thank you for the link. I also wanted to follow up with you on the links you had provided earlier to Alex Williams' articles. For the purposes of the 'technical brilliance' discussion, they were not very relevant since they were about the human genetic system, not this tiny bacterium. However, they did raise this interesting question of whether metadata was evolvable. I don't think I agree with his argument. Certainly metadata can't exist and can't evolve without data there in the first place. To be grounded in one example, the pattern of histones that might silence a gene cannot exist without the DNA. But the DNA for a simpler kind of life can exist without the histones. Bacteria don't have histones. We also can see that histones serve multiple functions, some metadata related, some not. When first discovered, histone was just considered a packing material that helped keep the DNA tightly packed in the nucleus. Later, the regulatory fuctions were discovered. It is easy to argue that the metadata function is built on top of the packing function which was there first. Williams' main argument against metadata evolution seems to be 'inextricable dependency', the idea that metadata is inextricably dependent on data for meaning. Well, that's true, but so what? One cell used histones for packing, but had multiple genes with overlapping functions. A random methylation event on a histone silences one of the genes, and now the cell survives to reproduce more than similar cells without the methylation, and the methylated histone is copied to each daughter cell. Poof, active metainformation has been created. If the information (or meta-information) is physical, variable, and heritable then it is going to evolve through natural selection on the basis of its effect on the phenotype.Nakashima_{October 29, 2009
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